Dassascai looked at him through the flames. ‘And your line of work is?’
‘Administration, mostly,’ Temrai replied. ‘And I hang about at staff meetings. That sort of thing.’
‘A man of power and influence,’ Dassascai replied. ‘Well, I’d better tell you what I’m good at. I can buy, and I can sell; I’m used to travelling, I can bargain, usually get a good deal. My mother used to say I’ve got an honest face. That’s about it.’
Temrai smiled. ‘You’d probably have made a good Perimadeian,’ he said. ‘Or an Islander. How did you come to be in Ap’ Escatoy, anyhow?’
Dassascai made a sudden swoop and stood up again, cramping another struggling goose to his chest. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, sitting down. ‘When I was a kid I fell out with my father about something or other. He got angry, I walked away and kept going. Some time later I found myself in Ap’ Escatoy, hiding behind a row of barrels with a basket of stolen crayfish. Next thing I knew, I’d sold the crayfish and bought some more at the wharf. After that it was all reassuringly boring for a while. I like life better when it’s boring.’
Temrai rubbed the tip of his nose with his knuckle. ‘Do you?’ he said.
‘You don’t, obviously.’
‘I’m very hard to bore,’ Temrai answered. ‘Nearly everything interests me. For instance, I’d find building up a fishmonger’s business from scratch very interesting indeed.’
Dassascai shook his head. ‘Don’t be so sure,’ he said. ‘You stand behind a trestle in the market all day, wondering how the hell you’re going to shift the stock before it starts to smell if nobody ever stops and buys anything. You do this for most of the day, even on days when you sell out. Your feet hurt. You stare at the faces of dead fish and they stare back at you. Ten years later, you rent a covered stall with a torn awning. Five years after that, you worry about how much money your wife’s spending on carpets, and try and figure out how exactly the hired help’s ripping you off without it showing up in the accounts. Five years after that -’ he lifted his head and smiled ‘- some bastard saps the walls of your city and you get another job plucking geese. The boring bits were the best, no doubt about it.’
Temrai stood up. ‘I think you may well be right,’ he said. ‘If I hear of anything really dull, I’ll let you know.’
‘Thanks,’ Dassascai replied. ‘I’d like that.’
When he got back to his tent, Temrai found Bossocai the engineer and Albocai the captain of the reserves waiting for him, sitting on little folding stools just outside the flap. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘have you been waiting long?’
‘No, not at all,’ replied Albocai, who was a rotten liar.
‘I’ve just been talking to a most interesting spy,’ Temrai went on, pushing open the flap and waving them through into the tent. ‘Keep your voices down, by the way, my wife’s still asleep.’
‘How do you know he was a spy?’ Bossocai asked.
Temrai grinned. ‘If he’d had SPY tattooed on his forehead it couldn’t have been any plainer,’ he replied. ‘He was a nice man. I knew his uncle for years.’
Albocai frowned. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’d better have him arrested. What’s his name?’
‘No need for that,’ Temrai replied. ‘It’s not as if we’ve got any secrets worth stealing. In fact,’ he continued, with a smile the other two couldn’t understand, ‘being a spy in our camp must be the most boring job on earth, so that’s all right. I’m not sure who he’s spying for, but my guess is that he’s been sent by the provincial office. That’s interesting, don’t you think?’
‘I think you’re either wrong or taking this far too lightly,’ Albocai said. ‘Are you sure he’s a spy?’
Temrai nodded. ‘When a man passes himself off as the nephew of a man I’ve known all my life and who never had a brother or a sister, let alone a nephew, and sits there knowing perfectly well who I am while pretending he doesn’t know me, and then, in a not-so-roundabout way, asks me to employ him as a spy, I draw the logical conclusion. That reminds me – Albocai, I want you to find out what happened to a man called Dondai-’
‘The goose-plucker? He died.’
‘Ah, right. Find out more about it, would you? If he was murdered, you can have your spy with my blessing, and the next time I see him I’ll expect him to be in several pieces. Anyway, that’s enough about that. What can I do for you?’
‘Well,’ said the engineer, and launched into a detailed technical enquiry about torsion-engine rope settings, a subject about which Temrai knew more than anybody else in the army; after he’d got his answer, Albocai chivvied him about finalising the order of battle for the reserve light infantry. When they’d both gone, Temrai looked at the bed and yawned; he felt sleepy, and it was far too late now to go to bed. He picked up his quiver, sat down on the clothes-press and began whetting the blades of his arrowheads on a leather strop.
Back at the goose pen, meanwhile, Dassascai the spy was plucking feathers and going over in his mind the first contact he’d made with the man he’d been sent to kill.
‘Watch out,’ the boy said. ‘Go careful, or you’ll-’
Too late. Gannadius tripped over the fallen branch and fell forwards into mud; nasty, thick mud under a thin layer of leaf-mould. He felt his legs sink in, right up to the knees, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to free them but he tried anyway. All he succeeded in doing was to pull his foot out of his boot. The feel of the mud on his bare foot was disgusting.
(Just a minute, he thought.)
‘Hang on,’ the boy said behind him. ‘Don’t thrash about, you’ll just make it worse.’
The boy grabbed him under the arms and lifted. He angled his other foot so as not to lose that boot as well.
(Oh hell, I remember this. And I don’t think I’m going to like…)
‘There you are,’ the boy said. He could turn his head now; he was looking at a young man, no more than eighteen but enormously tall and broad across the shoulders, with a broad, stupid-looking face, wispy white-blond hair already beginning to recede, a small, flat nose, pale-blue eyes. ‘You really should look where you’re going,’ he said. ‘Come on, it’s time we weren’t here.’
Gannadius opened his mouth, but his voice didn’t work. He stooped down and tugged at his boot till it came free. It was full of mud and water. The boy had started lumbering off through the undergrowth (a dense forest overgrown with brambles and squelching wet underfoot; yes, definitely the same place) and he had to hurry to keep up. By following the boy exactly and walking where he’d trampled a path, he was able to pick his way through the tangle.
‘I don’t like the look of this, Uncle Theudas,’ the boy said; and a moment later, men appeared out of the mess of briars and bracken, stumbling and struggling, wallowing in the mud and ripping their coats and trousers on the thorns. It would’ve been hilariously funny to watch, but for the fact that in spite of their difficulties they were clearly set on killing him and the boy and, unlike the two of them, they were in armour and carrying weapons.
‘Damn,’ his nephew said, ducking under a wildly swishing halberd. He straightened up, took the halberd away from the man who’d been using it and smashed him in the face with the butt end of the shaft. Another attacker was struggling towards him, his boots so loaded with mud that he could only just waddle. He was holding a big pole-axe, but as he swung it, he caught the head in a clump of briars, and before he could get it free Theudas Junior stabbed him in the stomach with his newly acquired halberd; his opponent wobbled, let go of the pole-axe and waved his arms frantically for balance, then collapsed backwards, his feet now firmly stuck, just as Gannadius’ had been, and lay helplessly on his back in the slimy mud, dying. ‘Come on,’ the boy said, leaning back and grabbing Gannadius’ wrist while fending off a blow from a bill-hook with the halberd, gripped one-handed near the socket. ‘Gods damn it, if you weren’t my uncle I’d leave you behind.’
(And that’s all I can remember. Damn.)